
Isaac Webb
Film Department Chair
Isaac Webb is a screenwriter and director from Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania who earned his baccalaureate degree at Northwestern
University.
Isaac most recently wrote and directed FIRST BORN a psychological
thriller starring Elisabeth Shue, Steven Mackintosh, and
Blair Brown. The film centers on a woman who struggles
with postpartum psychosis. First Born is produced by Graham
King’s Initial Entertainment Group (Gangs of New
York and The Departed) and is being distributed by First
Look Films International.
Isaac is Co-Director of DESIRE, a documentary project
that follows the lives of six teenage girls from New Orleans
through four years of high school. Desire was aired on
PBS. Funders include the National Endowment for the Arts,
the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation.
Isaac was chosen as one of eight filmmakers selected for
the Sundance 2000 Writer and Director labs for his feature
length sreenplay, BLACKBOTTOM.
Isaac has produced, written and directed several short
films that have been recognized by such festivals as the
Chicago Film Festival, the Louisiana Video Shorts Festival,
and the San Francisco Film Festival. Of special note was
THE WEDDING, which aired nationally on Encore, Bravo,
BET and Showtime. He has also written scripts for HBONYC
and Universal Studios.
Among the numerous individual awards and grants that Isaac
has received are the Rockefeller Fellowship, a Kodak Spirit
Award, The New Orleans Film Festival Lumiere Award, and
a Louisiana Division of the Arts Artist Fellowship. Isaac
has been featured in Filmmaker’s Magazine 25 People
to Watch and is a member of both the Directors Guild of
America and the Writers Guild of America.

Ira Abrams
Moving Pictures instructor
Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Social Relations/Social Anthropology
from Harvard University and a B.A. in Anthropology from
the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently
a faculty member at the Idyllwild Arts Academy where he
teaches in the Moving Pictures Department, along with
serving as Institutional Director of ScriptEd Only Screenwriting
Conservatory, a distance learning screenwriting program.
Ira is a member of the Producers Guild of America and
serves as President, Board of Directors of CineStory,
a national non-profit screenwriter’s organization.
He has been a Visiting Professor of Film and Television
at Chapman University, Chair and Professor, Department
of Film and Video at Columbia College in Chicago, IL,
Associate Professor of Radio-Television-Film at the University
of Texas, Austin and a visiting faculty member at the
Instituto Tecnologico, Monterrey, Mexico, the International
Film and Television Workshops, Oaxaca, Mexico and Rockport,
Maine, and the University of Manchester, England. As a
professional filmmaker, Ira is president of Xaibe Productions,
Inc. which produces series for broadcast and educational
use. He has been a series producer for Chicago Tomorrow,
WTTW Public Television, Chicago and executive producer
for many educational and documentary films and television
productions.